John O'Connor wrote:

When the brain seeks to solve a problem it does not open up a file and scroll down a list of
data points arranged in a neat hierarchy.

Perhaps I do not know what I am talking about. I just found this unsupported statement.

"There is research evidence that knowledge stored in the brain is hierarchical, with propositions as the core building" No cite provided.


Oh well, what do I know about how my brain functions

John

above should read

"There is research evidence that knowledge stored in the brain is hierarchical, with propositions as the core building blocks"

Mea Culpa

John

John O'Connor wrote:

"There is research evidence that knowledge stored in the brain is
hierarchical, with propositions as the core building blocks"

On further thought, even if existing knowledege is best stored in a hierachical database, it does not follow that the creation of new knowledge follows a hierachical process.

Questions, questions. Are there no answers.

John

Zoot and ConnectedText

Ike -

The wiki is for long-term notes which evolve, grow into substantial essays over time. As well as the advantages of using a wiki - good for brainstorming, easy to access since it’s just another tab in Firefox, a way of collecting information to be used like LEGO bricks to create something larger, what I find useful here is that I can see how these changes have occurred, can go back in time, see how my thoughts have developed.

Thanks v. much for explaining how you use a wiki alongside Zoot. It seems like a useful strategy, and I may try out something similar with ConnectedText, especially if I can get my hands on the beta with outlining. As Manfred commented, wikis are (at least on the surface of it) a different way of approaching note-taking, despite the feature overlap with programs like Zoot, and worth investigating just because of that.

As for WhizFolders, I am attracted by its ability to provide universal links to its content - something I don't think NoteMap provides. This, and its rtf editor ,makes it an attractive partner to Zoot for the later stages of drafting. I can see, however, that a wiki might provide some of these benefits, too.

Maybe, as John Connors suggests - http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/526/0/a-taxonomy-for-knowledge-management-tools -
we need to take a look at the various stages of producing essays, articles, books, etc. again...

Derek

In that post, I didn't intend to say that an outline must serve as the endpoint of the process. I was only wondering how CT created outlines from undirected connections, which I mistakenly thought was a feature. Steve Zeoli corrected my misapprension.

But directly to the point you make - I think it is easy to make overly much of the epistemological implications of hierarchies, keywords, and undirected connections. Hierarchical keywords are the logical equivalent of a standard outline with cloning. (It is true that many outliners, however, don't clone.) A corollary is that a flat series of keywords is the equivalent of an outline only one level deep. Undirected connections--when used as Manfred suggests in his essay on the CT site, as equivalent to a footnote reference--amount to siblings in an outline, with an unknown parent. Where such (temporarily) unlabeled connections are useful, it suggests that those who use an outline format should be more open to undefined nodes, which can be created easily enough.

I do see a problem with excessive use of undirected connections, and personally I seldom find that I see a connection, yet don't know how the items are connected. Graphical quasi-outliners do exist, however, that emphasize such connections in a non-wiki format. An example is Visual Concept.

john oconnor wrote:

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
> I'm skeptical of undirected connections as in Wikis,
and I don't
>understand how CT can produce an outline (which involves directed
connections) from
>the undirected connections that CT allows. Maybe someone can
explain.

If you are looking for something that will create a hierarchy of
structured static data that can be easly turned into an outline I do not think a Wiki,
like Connectedtext, is what you need or should use. On the other hand if you are looking
for software that seems, IMHO, to mimic what the brain does in making connections
between data and creating knowledge then the Wiki concept may be worth exploring.
When the brain seeks to solve a problem it does not open up a file and scroll down a list of
data points arranged in a neat hierarchy.

As to the undirected connections that a
Wiki allows, this is neccessary for the creative part of the brain to function. There
is a place for describing and labeling connections, just not at the wiki stage. Once
you assign a label to a connection or descibe the direction in which concepts should
flow you run the risk of closing off alternate views.

Just my thoughts.

John
O'Connor

What I meant isn't that ndxcards already offers this, but that nothing keeps a program like ndxcards from adding such a feature. The automatic noticing of commonalities seems independent of the wiki format, unless I'm misunderstanding either you or CT. Evernote, as you previously noted, supplies this kind of instant information, using a system of hierarchical keywords. For me, this feature has yet to prove its value.

The main problem I have with undirected connections is, put baldly, everything is connected to everything else (except maybe those things existing outside of our light cone. Given any two elements in an outline or text, any of us could easily find _some_ way they're connected. Manfred's idea that connections are like reference footnotes was helpful here. But it seems to me that if you constrain your use of connections that way, they no longer occupy a central role, as seems intended in a wiki. Those who effectively uses a wiki, must have some contraining concept concept (or maybe a very well-developed sense of proportion), so they connect only what is helpful to connect, i.e. less than everything to everything else.

A milder form of this criticism can be leveled against outlines. Inspiration's concept maps and some of the modules in Axon feature concept maps, which are stronger than outlines/mindmaps, in that you not only subordinate nodes but label them substantively.

Many of the wiki-styled critiques of outlining, it seems to me, predate the availability of outliners with cloning, which I think obviates many of these criticisms. Hierarchy is equated with "rigid hierarchy." If I remember correctly, the Mac OS X outliners have had a difficult time introducing cloning. This was regarded as something of an accomplishment with TAO. (I could be confusing this feature with another.) On Windows, until Ultra Recall got cloning, it was rare among outline-based free form databases. These days the same functionality is often implemented with hierarchical key words, as in Idea! and Evernote.It still is not a common feature, which contributes to the perception of a radical disjunct between wiki-style connection and outlining. Cloning is absent from all of the mind-mappers I'm familiar with (what about MindManager? - I don't know if it has cloning.)

john oconnor wrote:

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>The immediate recognition of common key words seems
independent of the wicki
>approach of CT. Is that right? In principle, a program like
ndxcards could have a
>feature like this. Or so it would seem


In NDXcards you would
have to stop what you were doing and run a separate search. How likely is that going to
happen in practice. With Connectedtext you can quickly click on a keyword link to see
what is already connected. The speed of seeing the connection and the ability to
rapidly move between the connected ideas and to update them is something I would find
useful.

John O'Connor

Having dabbled with various wiki-style PIMS (the concept of which I like, but have yet to get over the hurdle of adapting to all the conventions required to use them effectively), it seems to me that there are some functional differences between wiki-style linking and cloning in an outline. In the wiki the connections are instantly visible as you are reviewing the content of the note, whereas you have to look for and search an outline to understand the context. I would also suggest, though this is just my own theory, that the connections in a wiki are more organic -- that is, they arise more naturally as the content develops -- than in an outline (whether or not this is a benefit probably depends upon your purpose).

Finally, a wiki allows for connections between notes without imposing a judgment about which is the superior thought or idea. That isn't always benefit, as it is important to be able to create that kind of organization, especially when writing -- which, I assume, is why CT has now added the outlining feature.

Steve Z.

"everything is connected to everything" in a wiki

Well, not necessarily. You can connect everything to everything, but that would make the connections meaningless. It would be the equivalent of having every sub-topic in a branch of the outline, apear in every other subtopic.

In fact, you import meaning on the information by selectively connecting things. Novices always ask for "automatic linking" or the idea that every topic refers to every topic in the whole database.

Let's say you have one topic called "flowers" and it contains the word "rose", you can chose to make a link to "rose" (or closer to my practice: you are writing in the topic about flowers, and then want to talk about roses; you could go on and talk about roses in the topic, but you make the decision to write about roses in a separate topic, make a wiki-link and then go on to write about it.) Now you don't want every topic that contains the word "rose" or "Rose" to link to that topic, if only because you may also have an acquaintance called "Rose" who has nothing to do with roses, etc., etc.

I don't understand what "undirected means either. In the example there is a direction from Flowers to roses (or, in this case, from general to particular). You can also link back from rose to Flowers (or you could assign the category "flower" to the topic of roses, primroses, etc., and have these topics automatically listed in the topic flower).

I agree that the kind of search that leads to noticing communality is independent of outliners. Devonthink, on th Mac, is an outliner.

You might even say that the kind of easy linking that characterizes wikis can be combined with outliners (Wikidpad is an attempt at doing that; and even the (paid) version of Notetab allows you to enclose a word with square brackets and have it refer to another document with that name; so does Jotplus - though neither one allows you easily to create a new topic by making such a link. I remember having asked the developer of Jotplus for this capability a long time ago [before ConnectedText, that is], but it was never implemented. The same is true of The Journal.)

But I have come to believe that Outlines should not be the basic or primary organising principle in note-taking and writing of drafts. I write, come upon another idea, and create a new entry for that idea; concentrate on that idea, and if it leads to something else, voila ... I enclose the word with double square brackets and there is another topic.It's a bit like Brainstorm that way.

Later I can worry about how it may fit in the larger picture. And I can make an outline at this point.

Hoping this helps,
Manfred

I am sorry to have to post this again, but there are some typos that I just have to correct (never see all of them before posting):

"everything is connected to everything" in a wiki

Well, not necessarily. You can connect everything to everything, but that would make the connections meaningless. It would be the equivalent of having every sub-topic in a branch of the outline, appear in every other sub-topic.

In fact, you impart meaning on the information by selectively connecting things. Novices always ask for "automatic linking" or the idea that every topic refers to every topic in the whole database.

Let's say you have one topic called "flowers" and it contains the word "rose", you can chose to make a link to "rose" (or closer to my practice: you are writing in the topic about flowers, and then want to talk about roses; you could go on and talk about roses in the topic, but you make the decision to write about roses in a separate topic, make a wiki-link and then go on to write about it.) Now you don't want every topic that contains the word "rose" or "Rose" to link to that topic, if only because you may also have an acquaintance called "Rose" who has nothing to do with roses, etc., etc.

I don't understand what "undirected link" means either. In the example there is a direction from Flowers to roses (or, in this case, from general to particular). You can also link back from rose to Flowers (or you could assign the category "flower" to the topic of roses, primroses, etc., and have these topics automatically listed in the topic flower).

I agree that the kind of search that leads to noticing communality is independent of wikis. Devonthink on the Mac is an outliner.

You might even say that the kind of easy linking that characterizes wikis can be combined with outliners (Wikidpad is an attempt at doing that; and even the Notetab (paid version) allows you to enclose a word with square brackets and have it refer to another document with that name; so does Jotplus - though neither one allows you easily to create a new topic by making such a link. I remember having asked the developer of Jotplus for this capability a long time ago [before ConnectedText, that is], but it was never implemented. The same is true of The Journal.)

But I have come to believe that Outlines should not be the basic or primary organizing principle in note-taking and writing of drafts. I write, come upon another idea, and create a new entry for that idea; concentrate on that idea, and if it leads to something else, voila ... I enclose the word with double square brackets and there is another topic.It's a bit like Brainstorm that way.

Later I can worry about how it may fit in the larger picture. And I can make an outline at this point.

Hoping this helps,
Manfred

Manfred wrote:

But I have come to
believe that Outlines should not be the basic or primary organizing principle in
note-taking and writing of drafts. I write, come upon another idea, and create a new
entry for that idea; concentrate on that idea, and if it leads to something else, voila
... I enclose the word with double square brackets and there is another topic.It's a
bit like Brainstorm that way.

Later I can worry about how it may fit in the larger
picture. And I can make an outline at this point.

Hoping this helps,
Manfred

I never viewed outlines as an organizing principle in note-taking or writing of drafts. One of the reasons why many DO view outlines that way probably has something to do with the lack of thought given to the design of early PIMs. You basically had "electronic version of a paper organizer, ala Lotus Organizer and Borland's Sidekick. True outliners like PC-Outline came down with a fatal case of featuritis. Feature upon feature were added to once-great outliners to the point where they were no longer outliners, but PIMs using a hierarchical structure that resembled an outline.

I view an outline as the structure... the skeleton of a document. As the "meat is put on the bones" the outline should disappear. Unfortunately I haven't found any modern outliners that can do that. They all suffer from PIMs-masquerading-as-outliners.

I'll probably have to bite the bullet and fire up PC-Outline and get reacquainted with it.

I've been guilty myself of indulging in hierarchical, tree-like PIMs. KeyNote has been invaluable and is a prime example. But lately I've been tinkering with Wikidpad and find it to have the right mix of features to help ween me off outliner-style tools.

Manfred wrote:

>
Well, not necessarily. You can connect everything to everything, but that
would make the connections meaningless. It would be the equivalent of having every
sub-topic in a branch of the outline, appear in every other sub-topic.

In fact, you
impart meaning on the information by selectively connecting things. Novices always
ask for "automatic linking" or the idea that every topic refers to every topic in the
whole database.

Yes, I understand that much. What I'm getting at is that it's _hard_ to be selective with undirected connections. But then, the connections aren't really undirected, you say:

I don't understand what "undirected link" means either. In the
example there is a direction from Flowers to roses (or, in this case, from general to
particular). You can also link back from rose to Flowers (or you could assign the
category "flower" to the topic of roses, primroses, etc., and have these topics
automatically listed in the topic flower).

So you're saying that a distinction exists between connecting flowers to rose versus connecting roses to flowers? A connection from roses to flowers looks different from a connection from flowers to roses? Then I must have misconceived the essence of wikis. You hear about flowers and roses being "linked," which seems to imply the indiscriminability of direction. Wikis are often lauded because they do not require that you choose which node is superordinate and subordinate. But if connections are directed, such a choice _is_ required (although, as in an outline with cloning, a circular connection is at least formally possible). The item linked from, then, is effectively subordinate to the item linked to. One can assign a semantics other than that of subordination, although I'm not sure what else the semantics (of one-way connections) could consistently comprise.

I interpret a link from rose to flowers as a hierarchy. Rose is designated as subordinate to flowers. (Or the other way around. It really doesn't matter, the choice being conventional.) A link going the other way, from rose to flowers, makes flowers subordinate to rose, as when--per your example--instances of 'rose" includes the flower rose and the woman named 'Rose.'

Am I correctly understanding now that a "link" is actually an arrow, not a line?

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Having dabbled with various wiki-style PIMS (the concept of which I like, but have yet
to get over the hurdle of adapting to all the conventions required to use them
effectively), it seems to me that there are some functional differences between
wiki-style linking and cloning in an outline.

As is no doubt obvious, I have not dabbled. My habit--for better or worse--is to obsess good and long before actually trying something new.

In the wiki the connections are

instantly visible as you are reviewing the content of the note, whereas you have to
look for and search an outline to understand the context. I would also suggest, though
this is just my own theory, that the connections in a wiki are more organic -- that is,
they arise more naturally as the content develops -- than in an outline (whether or not
this is a benefit probably depends upon your purpose).

One question would concern the extent to which the differences you observe are inherent to Wikis or arise because of arbitrary or adventitious correlations between the basic approach and the features you value. Bracketing wikis for the moment, because of my fundamental ignorance, consider the difference between hierarchical key words and outlines. As often conceived, it boils down to a more formalism: do you drag children to parents, as in outlines, or do you parents to children, as in key words. No doubt some people prefer one or the other, but the distinction doesn't seem to deserve to be called fundamental.

There is, I think, a distinction worth making between the real cores of the two approaches. In an outline you can subordinate to items; with a categorical approach (which seems more apt than 'keyword,' considering what the distinction actually amounts to) items you can subordinate to are disinguished from he basic 'note' unit. This lends itself to the category tree but doesn't require it. Programs outputting an apparent quasi-outline can be categorical in nature. Black Hold Organizer comes to mind.

In theory, you could drag from parent to child and have an outline strucure. A program could accomplish this if the outline turned any categorized item into a category. This would suit someone who like to drag to subordinates instead of to parent but wants the greater flexibility of an quasi-outliner as opposed to system of relatively fixed categories.

All I'm getting at is that the clusters of features that existing programs present do not necessarily reflect what's possible or what's responsible for valued features.

Finally, a wiki allows for
connections between notes without imposing a judgment about which is the superior
thought or idea. That isn't always benefit, as it is important to be able to create that
kind of organization, especially when writing -- which, I assume, is why CT has now
added the outlining feature.

Steve Z.